I have said before that SEO is not rocket science, it simply requires a bit of time and some common sense. If you have never taken a look at optimizing your site, you may be wondering what kind of quick-hitters you can use to immediately improve your rankings. I have recently started doing website SEO consultations, and I can tell you that while there is no magic bullet, there are a few simple things you can do that will help improve your search rankings. These same things will help visitors to your website have a much more pleasurable experience as well. Try these easy “first steps” and see what happens. You may be surprised.

Use a Unique Title and Description Meta Tag

This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many poorly written titles and descriptions are out there. Since your title appears as your search engine result, and above the address bar when visitors go to your page, make sure it is descriptive, and eye catching. Also make sure that all of your pages have a unique title and description, and not just generic ones that are about your company, etc. This may be difficult if you have hundreds or thousands of pages, but there are generator applications out there that can do this for you. If not, make sure that the pages you really want indexed all have a unique title and description.

Examine All Your Links and Images

Make sure that every image and link on your site has a title attribute. This is the title that comes up when you mouse over a link or image. It is important for both the search engine to index the page, and to help visitors to the page know where a link is sending them. The title is especially important for hot links within the content of your site. Also for every image, there should be an alt text attribute in the code. This will enable text to be displayed in the event that the image does not pop-up for some reason. It also is the easiest way for the search engine robots to read your site. Easier to read, easier to index, which moves you up the ladder faster. Again, this is basic common sense, but something that is often overlooked by web developers.

Okay, it’s that simple. Two easy steps. We have seen dramatic results for websites when they just fixed these two things. These are things that an in-house web guru can easily take care of for you. If you don’t have a web developer in house, I know a company you can hire to fix it for you at a reasonable price. Either way, get it done as soon as possible. You will be happy you did.